Why stop here
On October 5, 1931, pilots Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon Jr. made aviation history when they belly-landed "Miss Veedol" at Fancher Field after the first nonstop trans-Pacific flight — about 41 hours and 4,500 miles from Japan with no landing gear. Named for WWI pilot Major John T. Fancher who died here in 1928, this East Wenatchee airfield served civilian aviation into the 1960s before becoming the Fancher Heights subdivision. A 14-foot monument still marks the landing site.
Before you go
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The short tour
Listen in the car on the way, or on headphones once you are standing there. The longer history and the sources are below.
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The long version
The airfield that would witness one of aviation’s greatest achievements began with tragedy. Established in 1926 on a farm field northeast of East Wenatchee, in Douglas County, the site was an informal landing strip used for air shows and the occasional flight.
On April 29, 1928, Major John T. “Jack” Fancher, a World War One pilot and commander of Spokane’s Air National Guard aviation squadron, came to perform in an air show held as part of Wenatchee’s Apple Blossom Festival. While he was inspecting unexploded ordnance from his bombing demonstration, one device detonated, and Fancher died within hours. Within days, the Wenatchee Chamber of Commerce named the field Fancher Field in his honor.
Fancher Field faced unique legal complications in its early years. The City of Wenatchee wanted to own and develop the airfield, but the field lay across the river in Douglas County, and state law prevented cities from owning land outside their boundaries. The legislature changed the law, and Wenatchee took possession in 1934.
In the years that followed, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) provided labor to improve the runways and facilities. The field remained relatively small and informal — rough, unimproved landing strips serving local pilots, barnstormers, and the occasional long-distance flier.
The Pacific had been crossed by air once before — in 1928, Australian aviator Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew flew the Southern Cross from Oakland to Australia in stages, with stops in Hawaii and Fiji. But no one had ever flown the ocean nonstop, and the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun had put up a $25,000 prize for the first crew to do it.
On the morning of October 4, 1931, two American pilots took off from Sabishiro Beach near Misawa, Japan, in a red Bellanca Skyrocket monoplane called “Miss Veedol” (named for their sponsor, Veedol Motor Oil). Their goal: the first nonstop trans-Pacific flight.
Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon Jr. knew the roughly 4,500-mile journey would push them to the absolute limits of aviation technology. To save fuel and increase range, they made a radical decision: after takeoff, they jettisoned their landing gear, planning to belly-land at their destination. When two gear struts stuck, Pangborn — a former professional wing-walker — climbed out onto the wing strut in freezing air to work them loose by hand.
For about 41 hours, the two pilots flew through darkness, storms, and exhaustion, with no way to land safely if something went wrong. Their only option was to keep flying east toward North America.
As dawn broke on October 5, 1931, they crossed the coast and made for Wenatchee. Low on fuel and flying a plane with no landing gear, they circled Fancher Field and prepared for a belly landing.
At about 7:14 AM, Pangborn brought Miss Veedol down in a controlled skid across the dirt field. The plane slid to a stop with only a bent propeller. It was, in HistoryLink’s words, the first nonstop airplane flight between Japan and the United States — the National Park Service notes that eight other crews had attempted the nonstop crossing, and all had failed.
The flight covered roughly 4,500 miles in about 41 hours (HistoryLink records the crossing at 41 hours and 13 minutes; the National Park Service gives 41 hours and 34 minutes). It proved that trans-Pacific aviation was possible.
Clyde Pangborn (1894-1958) was already an experienced stunt pilot who had performed as a wing-walker with the Gates Flying Circus. After the trans-Pacific flight, he continued flying professionally and served as a test and ferry pilot during World War II. For the 1931 crossing he was awarded the Harmon Trophy, one of aviation’s highest honors.
Hugh Herndon Jr. was a young Princeton-educated heir whose family’s oil fortune financed much of the expedition; his mother, Standard Oil heiress Alice Boardman, put up most of the money. After the historic flight, the two pilots had a falling out over credit and money — Pangborn complained publicly that he had received only a small share of the proceeds while Herndon had flown only a fraction of the hours.
A 14-foot Pangborn-Herndon Monument — a native basalt column topped with aluminum wings, designed by Walter Graham — was dedicated at the landing site in 1969. It still stands today near the Fancher Heights subdivision, a permanent marker of the day two aviators changed aviation history. The bent propeller from the landing is preserved at the Wenatchee Valley’s regional museum.
After the famous 1931 landing, Fancher Field continued as a civilian airfield. It was never a major military installation; as the United States prepared for World War II, Pangborn Memorial Airport was built nearby in 1941 — named for Clyde Pangborn even though his landing had been at Fancher Field.
In 1949, the City of Wenatchee turned Fancher Field over to private operation. The field was used for:
Over the following decades, the field gradually fell into disuse as the region’s aviation shifted to Pangborn Memorial Airport, where Northwest Airlines had begun the first commercial flights in 1945.
Fancher Field eventually ceased operations. The runways were abandoned, and developers acquired the property.
Today, the historic airfield is the Fancher Heights housing subdivision. Streets like Fancher Boulevard, Fancher Field Road, and Fancher Landing preserve the name and memory of the aviation pioneer and the two pilots who crossed the Pacific.
The Pangborn-Herndon Monument remains at the memorial site, a basalt-and-aluminum reminder that this quiet residential area was once the endpoint of one of the most daring flights in aviation history.
Fancher Field represents the golden age of aviation, when pilots pushed the boundaries of what was possible with little more than courage, skill, and determination.
The first nonstop trans-Pacific flight helped open the door to commercial air travel across the Pacific, connecting America and Asia in ways that would have been unimaginable just a generation earlier.
For those who lived in East Wenatchee in 1931, the sight of that red Bellanca sliding across the dirt runway must have seemed like witnessing the future arrive ahead of schedule.